by Jane Langton
“Come in,” said Jennifer. “You’re Mary Kelly’s husband, aren’t you? A professor or something, like Mary? I mean, Mary and I are together in the chorus. We stand side by side. That is, we will be if I make it to the concert. My baby’s due on Christmas day, only who knows? It might be early. What can I do for you? I mean, nobody else is here to talk to. They’ve all left. I’m all by myself now. And I’m getting out myself next week. The house is all mixed up in some kind of legal tangle. Probate, I guess it is. Here, I’ll just move this stuff out of the way. Sit down.”
Homer sat down and looked around. Ham’s living room was clean, and it was plain that someone, probably Jennifer, had attempted a kind of tidiness. But beneath the superficial order a more fundamental disorder was apparent. The place was a musical jungle. A baby grand piano stuck out into the hall. A harpsichord was wedged behind the sofa. A cello case lay under the harpsichord. Stacks of music were everywhere. Scattered about the room were a pair of guitars, a banjo, a zither, a trombone, a great gold harp, and an accordion sparkling with plastic mother-of-pearl.
“Don’t tell me,” said Homer. “That handsaw on the mantelpiece. It’s not just for cutting up firewood, right?”
“Oh, no,” said Jennifer, giggling. “That’s a musical saw. You bend it into a sort of double curve on your knee and play it with a bow.”
“You’ve got enough instruments in here for a concert band,” said Homer. “How many people were living here when Ham was alive?”
“Oh, wow, I don’t know. They were always coming and going. There was Mrs. Esterhazy, of course. And her two kids. And Mr. Proctor. They were here all the time. But other people came and went. Like Suzie. Look here.” Jennifer jumped up and snatched something off the mantel. “What am I going to do with Suzie’s dollar fifty? Here, listen to this. She left a note: ‘Dear Ham, This is just to thank you for letting me stay while I was so mad. I wish I could pay for all the food I ate, but this is all I’ve got. Maybe it will pay for the Cokes. Love, Suzie.’”
“Who was Suzie?” said Homer. “Why was she so mad?”
“Oh, she was this little kid. She ran away. She was only fourteen. Her parents had been just so incredibly disgusting. Ham talked to them, and then she went home.”
“She was one of Ham’s—ah—Rats, I gather?” Homer smiled ingratiatingly at Jennifer, not sure whether Rats was an outsider’s or an insider’s word. Maybe Jennifer would be insulted.
But she laughed. “Oh, no, not really. But the rest of us were Rats, all right. Of course, I’m a Rat and a student too, at the same time. At least I am so far. I don’t know how long it will last—being a student, I mean. They won’t let you have a baby in a dorm, so Ham invited me to move in here. But now I’ve got to go someplace else.”
“You’re not married, I guess, Jennifer?”
“Oh, no.”
“You can’t just go home like Suzie?”
“Oh, God, no. Not home. My parents don’t even know.” Jennifer patted her swollen jumper. “I’ve got some friends. I know a place to go. Sort of a big place with a lot of extra space. I’ll be all right there.”
“Well, that’s good. Central location?” said Homer innocently.
“Oh, yes, a really great location. You see, I’m going to keep the baby. I’m making little clothes for it and everything. I mean, you know, it’s this big sort of primordial motherhood kind of thing. I’ve absolutely lost all interest in the intellectual history of the Reformation. All I can think of is, like, making little quilts for the baby, and, I mean, it’s so strange, I just want to sit and sew. Isn’t that strange?”
Homer remembered James Cheever’s suspicions about the women in Ham’s house. He wanted to ask a nosy question, but he didn’t dare. But then Jennifer read his mind and she spoke up fearlessly. “And if you think Ham was the father of my child you’re just stupid, that’s all. Just really dumb like all the rest.”
Well, it was none of Homer’s business. It occurred to him that the infant might even have been immaculately conceived, if it was going to be born on Christmas Day. Oh, blasphemy. Oh, sacrilege. He screwed up his courage and asked another question. “Well, what about Ham? Did he have a girlfriend at all? Am I right in thinking Mrs. Esterhazy was …?”
“Oh, no, not Mrs. Esterhazy.” Jennifer laughed. “I don’t think he had anybody at all. Well, there was Vick, of course. He did a lot of kidding around with Vick Van Horn, only it was, you know, sort of a teacher-and-student relationship. Except, wow, I’ve got three friends right now who are living with teaching fellows and section men.”
“So teachers do still have affairs with students,” murmured Homer. “Like good old Abélard and Héloïse.”
“Oh, right. Of course, plenty of people had a thing about Ham Dow. I mean, they would have given their eyeteeth! But I think he was just too sort of, you know, honorable to take advantage of anybody. He was just really so kind. I mean, look at the way he took me in. That’s the way he was with everybody. Look at Mrs. Esterhazy. He invited her to live in his house, and of course he invited her kids too. Mrs. Esterhazy was having a hard time, I guess, trying to earn enough money singing, and she said she was too proud to live on welfare, so he took her in, and he was getting voice students for her too.” Jennifer jumped up. “I vass alone in da vorld,” she said, rolling her eyes like Mrs. Esterhazy. “My hozband, poof! he ron avay vit anozzer vooman. My cheeldren, zey vere starving!”
“Starving? Those enormous little cherubs, surely they weren’t starving?”
“Well, they certainly weren’t starving while they were living here. Ham was a really good cook. He’d whip up a big vat of something every night, and of course we all helped, and people would, you know, drop in. It was just really so much fun. Sometimes it was string quartets, and we’d all sit around on the floor and listen, and sometimes it would be folk singing, and we’d all sing. Or there was some crazy kind of ethnic music, or bluegrass. You know. And people would bring beer, or bottles of wine. And you won’t believe it, but we even did folk dancing in here. You wouldn’t think there’d be enough room, but we’d just lift the sofa out of the way on the table, and everybody’d be bumping into everybody else, and there’d be the craziest people playing native instruments. And everybody came. Not just all young ones like us. Real old people too. Even Miss Plankton. Miss Plankton used to come and bring homemade cookies and get a little tipsy on a glass of wine, and say things like, ‘Oh, what fun!’” Jennifer clasped her hands and beamed like a little old Cambridge lady. “‘Oh, isn’t this a lark?’ I mean, it was like a party here almost every night. It was all really just so great.” Jennifer kicked the leg of the sofa. “You know, the funny thing is, this place belongs to me. I mean, I own one sixty-fifth of it. I suppose they’ll just have an auction or something and divvy up the money.”
“One sixty-fifth? Oh, that’s right,” said Homer. “Marley told me there were a lot of beneficiaries to Ham’s will.”
“It was just a joke, you see,” said Jennifer. “His will was just a big joke. He started making it last summer, when some guy from the Law School was here, and this guy told him he ought to make a will. So Ham took a scrap of paper and scribbled something on it, and the Law School guy signed it, and then Ham kept this crazy piece of paper taped up on the refrigerator, and every time anybody new came along he’d add their name to his will. It was just a big joke.”
“But it was legal, I suppose?” said Homer.
“Oh, right. He always put down the date and got witnesses to sign it. But it was just a sort of running joke. It was just for fun.”
Homer said good-bye to Jennifer and walked home again. There was an odd sensation in his breast, and it took him a moment to identify the feeling. He had often been aware of the same thing, reading Henry Thoreau. He had felt it again, just the other day, looking again at Melville’s delirious letters to Hawthorne—a sense of affection and loss. He wanted to know them in the flesh. But Thoreau and Melville were dead, irretrievably dead and gone. It was
the same with Ham Dow. The more Homer learned about Ham, the more he felt the man had been a force for something which he did not hesitate to call good. Little by little Ham’s death had become more than an interesting professional problem. It had been transformed for Homer into what it was for nearly everyone else, a personal disaster. Walking home to Huron Avenue from Ham’s house, he was overcome by a foolish and impossible desire to meet and know the man alive.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Saturday was mild for the middle of November. Homer and Mary took a walk along the Charles after lunch, and then Mary turned around to go home to work on her half of the index, with which she was as infatuated as Homer. “Now listen, Homer, don’t forget to stop at the grocery store when you’re through at Widener. Have you got the list?”
“Right here,” said Homer. “The trouble is, I’ve got two lists. One of them is the references I’ve got to check, and what I’m afraid I’ll do is march up to the call desk in Widener and pound on the counter and demand a dozen tortillas and a can of enchilada sauce.”
“Well, just be sure you don’t hand me twelve volumes of the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society and expect me to turn them into a Mexican dinner. Oh, Homer, look at the traffic up there on the bridge. It’s a good thing you’re on foot. What a snarl! Look, it’s backed up as far as the eye can see.”
But when Homer made his way to the congested corner of Boylston Street and Memorial Drive, he found the walking almost as bad as the driving. Turning up Boylston in the direction of Harvard Square, he was immediately buffeted by a thick flood of pedestrians moving the other way. What was happening? Where were all these people going? They were like lemmings, pouring toward the river.
“Whoops! Oh, excuse me. Oh, Homer Kelly, isn’t this awful?” Somebody else was trying to move in the direction of the square, struggling against the tide. It was Julia Chamberlain. “Oh, Lord, why didn’t I go around by way of Dunster Street? I should have known better. Oh, excuse me, ma’am, I’m terribly sorry.”
“Well, what the hell is it?” Homer had to roar because all the cars on the street were blowing their horns at once. “Where’s everybody going?”
Julia Chamberlain looked at him and screeched, “I just can’t believe it. What a nitwit you are, Homer Kelly. I told you on the phone yesterday. It’s the Harvard-Yale game. Look, here comes the band.”
“Oh, football. Is that it.” Homer couldn’t make himself heard above the blare of the trumpets and sousaphones and the thump of the drums. A lot of people in crimson jackets were turning into Boylston Street from the square, while the traffic came to a full stop and the drivers all gave up and leaned out their car windows and the sky lavished sunshine on the dazzling sousaphones and flashing trombones and glittering flutes and glockenspiels. Homer’s entire understanding of sporting life at Harvard was limited to a song by Tom Lehrer, “Fight Fiercely, Harvard! Demonstrate Your Prowess, Do!” He was about to quote this in Julia Chamberlain’s ear, but then she stopped to buy a Harvard pennant and began waving it over her head, and he decided to forbear.
“You know, it’s all I can do not to turn around and follow the band,” shouted Julia. “The fever, it’s really catching. But I’d never get into the stadium. You have to get your ticket way ahead. I gave mine to my nephew this morning.”
“But why aren’t you going? I should think a loyal member of the Harvard administration like you would be front and center on the fifty-yard line.”
“Oh, I’ve got a meeting. One of those everlasting meetings. You know how it is.”
“You mean somebody arranged a meeting for the same time as the Harvard Yale game? What kind of a sour puckered-up heartless old creep would do a thing like that?”
“Well, Homer, dear, I’m afraid it was me, as a matter of fact.”
“But what was so important that you had to call a meeting for a time like this?”
Homer’s face was very close to Julia Chamberlain’s. He had a tight grip around her waist as they rammed their way across Mass Av in a kind of flying wedge, and therefore he could clearly see that something was troubling her. She was incapable of lying, that was it. She was one of those staunch Yankees who would rather throw up their lunch than let a false word cross their lips. Homer knew the breed well. The Puritan Ethic and the stern New England conscience were the glue that held Julia Chamberlain together.
“Well, you know, Homer, you can’t always talk about these things, what with one thing and another. Emergencies come up.”
“Touchdown!” cried Homer, and he landed the two of them on the sidewalk in front of the entrance to the Yard. Then they had to force their way through the narrow gate, because a crush of football fans was squeezing through it in the other direction. The gate was a mean little entry, a gift to the school from the class of 1875. It was a clumsy piece of architectural braggadocio, all scrolls and pediments and little concrete pineapples, and the message it proclaimed on a marble tablet had irritated Homer in the days of his youth when he had directed traffic at the crossing:
OPEN YE THE GATES THAT THE RIGHTEOUS NATION
WHICH KEEPETH THE TRUTH MAY ENTER IN
The inscription still gave him a pain. He nudged Mrs. Chamberlain and pointed at it. “Arrogance,” he said.
“Oh, I know. Isn’t it disgusting. I mean, it’s the whole trouble. Look at those alumni, will you? Don’t some of the alumni look positively frightening? Sometimes it makes you wonder. It just makes you wonder if the whole thing is worthwhile after all.”
At University Hall she said good-bye. “I’m going in here, Homer, dear. Thank you for running interference for me like that. I really appreciate it.”
Homer asked a polite farewell question about the game. “Who do you think will win this afternoon?” he said, his mind already running through the list of references he wanted to lay his hands on in the library.
But to his surprise Julia Chamberlain grasped him by the coat collar and tapped him on the chest with the end of her pennant. “Yale,” she said. “Fourteen to seven. You see, Homer, it’s Goober. Oh, I know, we’ve got a terrific offense and a couple of really great fullbacks, Puffer and Halloran. But they’ve got Goober. Their defense is terrible, but with a forward pass like Goober’s, there’s absolutely no hope.” Julia shook her head earnestly at Homer and started up the steps of University Hall.
The woman was as transparent as a pane of glass. Homer thought about it as he turned away. She should have been going to the game. She was dying to go to the game. Why had she called a meeting for the same time as the game?
Homer walked slowly up the gigantic staircase of Widener Library, and puffed his way up another grandiose set of marble stairs, and gasped his way into the catalogue room and approached the call desk. But then he stopped short, turned around, ran headlong down the two great staircases and loped in the direction of University Hall. As he rounded the corner of the building he slowed down and craned his neck to see what he could see.
Yes, there was Julia, standing on the porch, talking to a couple of men who looked faintly familiar to Homer. They were Overseers. He had seen them before in the Faculty Room, along with President Cheever and Senior Vice President Sloan Tinker and the five Fellows. This must be another meeting of the Board. But this time Cheever and Tinker would not be there, because they were away in Chicago. Who was that? That old gentleman wasn’t an Overseer. That was Shackleton Bowditch, the Senior Fellow. Were the Fellows and the Overseers meeting together again? Maybe the thing had become a habit. But surely you would think they could contain their enthusiasm for each other’s company until after the Harvard-Yale game?
Something was up. Another huddle of Overseers was hurrying in the direction of University Hall. Some of them were carrying suitcases. They had come from far away. Homer suspected they had come in a hurry. He leaned his back against the monumental base of the statue of John Harvard and pretended to examine the roof of Massachusetts Hall, as the newcomers lugged their suitcases up the stairs. O
ne of them was the girl who had looked so young among the gray-headed men and women sitting in all those tall uncomfortable chairs upstairs a few weeks ago. Why were they meeting so soon again? Weren’t their regular meetings supposed to happen only every couple of months? “Emergencies come up,” Mrs. Chamberlain had said. Well, what emergency was it this time?
“I dropped everything,” said the girl who looked too young to be an Overseer, struggling with the heavy door. “I had to get a baby-sitter only six months older than Bobby. She’s only about two feet tall, but she can twist Bobby around her little finger.”
The Overseers disappeared inside. Another bunch of them came pouring up the stairs. Homer idled around the outside of the building for five more minutes, and then he couldn’t stand it any more. He went inside and climbed the stairs to the second floor. The door to the Faculty Room was open. Homer didn’t see any reason why he couldn’t just saunter casually by the door as if he were on his way to somewhere else. Slowly he ambled past the door and glanced inside.
They were all there. The meeting had been called in a hurry, but the great square of stately chairs was packed. The President himself was missing, and so was Senior Vice President Sloan Tinker. But Julia Chamberlain was not alone at King Arthur’s table. The Treasurer and all five Fellows sat on either side of her central chair.
Once again Homer stared inquisitively at the Harvard Corporation. It was a little band possessed of fabled power, he knew that, chosen from hand to hand, its members touching One another on the shoulder down through the generations, going back in time to the year 1650, when Harvard College had been little more than a scrap of ground with two or three drafty buildings and a handful of shivering students, back during the presidency of Dunster, who had been forced to resign because he was an Antipedobaptist. A pretty shocking thing to be. Everyone had been scandalized by a president who didn’t believe in infant baptism. Homer suspected the Corporation had always been a conservative body. After all, they were Fellows for life, the five of them. They must grow old and crusty on the job. Surely they were a force for the status quo. No radicals or Antipedobaptists in that bunch.
